They have finally published a paper on the expedition and the "Tear in the Sky"
That's an interesting read! I've skipped the sections on their tech setup, but there are a few things maybe worth following up on.
The main weaknesses of the paper seem to me:
1) they're taking historical UFO reports for facts that are anything but,
2) their banner anomaly happens when much of their equipment is offline (because the film team needs the power)
Excerpts and comments:
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UAP can stand for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon or Phenomena, although the A can also stand for Aerial/Aerospace; UAP was recently redefined by the U.S. Congress as Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena.
I wasn't aware that there's a third meaning for "UAP" now.
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UAP have come to their attention as an old, global air-safety risk at least [8,9].
I'm standing by my opinion that UAP are no air safety risk. Airports are cautious when they notice flying objects in their airspace, because these mundane flying objects can pose a risk to aviation, whether they're identified or not. That's why you need to be in contact with the FAA/air traffic control before you fly anything near an airport.
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[8] Á. Escolà-Gascón, N. Dagnall, A. Denovan, K. Drinkwater, Impact of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) on air safety: Evidence from Airbus® TCAS / ROSE simulators, J. Air Transp. Manag. (ISSN: 0969-6997) 119 (2024) 102617,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jairtraman.2024.102617 , URL
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969699724000826 .
[9] C. Siegert, Report on unidentifiable visual and radar sightings East Coast south island, AIR 2 (1 and 2) (December 1978-79) 8,9, URL
https://archive.org/details/NewZealandUFO/AIR-39-3-3-Volume-2-Parts-1-and-2-1956-1979/ .
That said, these references may be worth following up, perhaps in a separate thread on UAP and air traffic safety. I've posted before on the threat posed by untethered balloons (2 crashes ever), and on the threat posed by birds and other animals.
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There is little doubt that the majority of UAP are misidentifications, but anywhere between 4%–40% remain unidentified after careful investigations [10–14], depending upon the sources and quality of the reports. Despite this, there exist hard data that demonstrate unreasonably high speeds (above Mach 40-60) and accelerations (thousands of times g) [15–20], without corresponding sonic booms or fireballs.
Such observations represent cases of interest as they support the more exotic hypotheses, requiring novel physics or at least new engineering; but, more data are needed to characterize fast-moving objects and definitively rule out observational errors [21].
I don't think the claim "there exist hard data" is well-supported. The references are mostly overviews:
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[15] H. Oberth, Lecture notes for lecture about flying saucers, 1954, URL
http://knuthlab.org/library/0berth-1954.pdf .
[16] P.R. Hill, R.M. Wood, D. Donderi, Unconventional Flying Objects: A Scientific Analysis, Hampton Roads, 1995.
[17] C. Poher, Analysis of radar and air-visual UFO observations on 24 Oct 1968 at Minot AFB, North Dakota, USA, 2005, URL
https://explorescu.org/post/analysi...24-october-1968-at-minot-afb-north-dakota-usa . (Accessed 08 September 2019).
[18] P.R. Hill, Unconventional Flying Objects: A Former NASA Scientist Explains How UFOs Really Work, Hampton Roads Publishing, 2014.
[19] K.H. Knuth, R.M. Powell, P.A. Reali, Estimating flight characteristics of anomalous Unidentified Aerial Vehicles, Entropy 21 (10) (2019) 939.
[20] D. Coumbe, Anomaly. A Scientific Exploration of the UFO Phenomenon, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanhman MD, 2022.
[21] A. Loeb, S. Kirkpatrick, Physical Constaints on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, 2023, URL
https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/LK1.pdf. (Accessed 31 October 2023).
We have a thread on Minot that could use more attention:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/can-the-minot-afb-report-be-debunked.11748/ though elsewhere
@NorCal Dave points out that 1966 was a UFO flap year, and that may explain the coinciding witness reports, without resorting to the unproven assumption that all of the reports pertain to the same object. Our experience with the drone flap last winter highlights the likelihood of these sorts of misidentifications when people are looking for these things. The only "hard data" in the Minot case are 14 radarscope photos, the rest is witness statements.
I don't remember seeing the [21] Loeb/Kirkpatrick paper referenced, have we discussed this here? It surprises me that there was a cooperation.
[Edit: we have a short dedicated thread on it, and it was discussed in a more recent thread as well.]
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Many different phenomena are likely being included under the UAP umbrella. Heretofore non-discovered or sparsely studied atmospheric phenomena may be involved e.g. ball lightning [22,23] or earthquake lights [24–26]. Both of those have been considered ''pseudoscience'', despite well-documented observations to the contrary [27].
Here's what the USGS has to say about the "well-documented" earthquake lights:
Phenomena such as sheet lightning, balls of light, streamers, and steady glows, reported in association with earthquakes are called earthquake lights (EQL). Geophysicists differ on the extent to which they think that individual reports of unusual lighting near the time and epicenter of an earthquake actually represent EQL: some doubt that any of the reports constitute solid evidence for EQL, whereas others think that at least some reports plausibly correspond to EQL. Physics-based hypotheses have been proposed to explain specific classes of EQL reports, such as those in the immediate vicinity of the causative fault at the time of a major earthquake. On the other hand, some reports of EQL have turned out to be associated with electricity arcing from the power lines shaking.
We have discussed this here on Metabunk:
Mexico,
Sakurajima,
Costa Rica.
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Scientists collaborating with UAPx constitute a wide range of differing expertise and informed opinions; they strive for an introspective self-skepticism, aiming for the difficult balance between openness to speculative ideas on the one hand [37], versus a debunking posture on the other, aimed exclusively at explaining all ambiguities as part of known phenomena regardless of context.
I'd characterize the "debunking posture" as being adverse to presenting speculative ideas for serious consideration when the evidence does not support it. I would call this a scientific approach.
I'd say the opposite approach is aimed at finding ambiguities, with explanations as an inconvenience.
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A reason for two (or more) observation locations in the same general area is to have multiple, unique vantage points for the same UAP in an encounter. Another is to avoid past criticisms of one poor-quality image in one camera. If sites are close to one another but sufficiently separated, i.e., far beyond the position resolution of the measuring devices (but still near the hotspot, unlike [46]), triangulation is feasible, as attempted by Maccabee [47]. While this was vigorously pursued, the first expedition did not succeed in such data fusion. Due to the expense of transport of bulky materials, it was not practical for islanders (communicating via phones only) to have anything more than NV (two pairs). We suggest having only practical, identical setups going forward.
We've long held that triangulation capability is very desirable in UFO observations, because a great many misidentifications stem from errors in estimating the distance to the observed phenomenon, if it's not a camera artifact altogether. It is disappointing to learn that this project was aware of this, but did not achieve it for their banner "anomaly".
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UAPx uses a diverse set of devices to capture different types of data on many channels. The strategy of the UAPx/UAlbany collaboration involves:
1. Acquiring and commissioning multiple cameras and multiple copies of other sensors, to capture the same phenomenon from different angles, at high resolution, for robust estimations of distance, size, speed, and acceleration by triangulation, possible via precise unit locations [48].
2. Coincidence timing across all devices to help in a faster data reduction resulting in lists of ambiguities and true ''anomalies''.
[...]
Basically what they did was to use multiple cameras in "trail cam" mode, recording only when motion was detected, and cosmic radiation sensors, and consider only the data from events that were observed by multiple sensors.
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3.3. Radiation detection
Some documented UAP encounters involve apparent harm from ionizing radiation, e.g. the Cash-Landrum [36] and Rendlesham Forest [73] incidents.
I wasn't aware that Rendlesham involved harm (or, in fact, radiation exceeding the normal background). I don't know anything about Cash-Landrum. Maybe that's a claim we could examine in a separate thread? I believe there's a case (likely hoax) that actually did involve radioactive isotopes added to a "landing site", and also cases of unsubstantiated claims of "radiation burns".
I like the following section, not only because "lessons learned" always means "what went wrong", but because it sets a high-profile bar for future projects—they have no excuse for falling short.
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4. Laguna/Catalina expedition: Successes and lessons learned
While several observations were at least initially intriguing, the primary purpose of the initial outing, in retrospect, was an effective field testing of all the equipment and analysis techniques, even though it had novel facets, such as a Cosmic Watch for coincident particle detection, novel software (C-TAP, similar to what was presented in [55] but for FLIR), and the first time UAP seekers capitalized on Doppler radar (Section 5.1.1). Lessons learned included:
- • The UFODAP hardware should be of sufficiently high quality to serve as scientific instrumentation, but its software is not reliable for object tracking and identification, nor is the software capable of accessing the MSDAU (Multi-Sensor Data Acquisition Unit), the name given to the non-optical sensor collection, and as a result no ancillary data, such as GPS location and ADS-B exchange, were recorded.
- • Tracking just aircraft, via transponders, is not sufficient. It is also necessary to have apps showing maps of satellites (especially Starlink, often mistaken for UAP), all known rocket launches, and the ISS' trajectory. (See Appendix A for a quantitative study of our ISS observation.)
- • Multiple identical cameras are still a necessity, even if others can supplement the UFODAP like FLIR, all with sufficient (12-hour+) battery backups.
- • Having many FLIR cameras was not as beneficial as originally expected. They generated a large quantity of data which were not of the highest quality and challenging to analyze within a reasonable timeframe given limited personpower/CPUs. Instead, fewer, more modern, and better calibrated units would be optimal, as per Section 3.4(A.) Any connector must be RF-shielded (with metal) against stray EM noise.
- • All clocks must be synchronized, ideally at the sub-sec. level, and device positions recorded using a combination of GPS with a laser range finder. Working with a film crew, necessary for our seed funding, created distractions which led to these, and other, critical steps being neglected. One can imagine that the researchers who have at times labored under similar conditions have been affected in similar ways [86,87].
Lastly, more than two Cosmic Watches running in coincidence mode allow for a reduced background rate as well as rudimentary directionality. Alternatively, separation of a pair outside the typical diameter of cosmic-ray showers results in a greatly reduced background, permitting any anomalies to be more obvious. It is important to note, however, that due to secondary particle production from GeV-TeV muons, shielding will increase the background rate.
Now here's the big one:
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5. Example observations and preliminary results
5.1. UFODAP: Its titular ambiguity
The UFODAP system ultimately made a detection that remains the expedition's most intriguing ambiguity. Multiple camera ambiguities (multiple videos close by in time on the minute scale) were discovered, but neither live via visual observation by a team member, nor in a systematic review of the recordings by person or software. These ambiguities were discovered through a systematic review of the Cosmic Watch data, because they appear to be associated, at least temporally, with the highest-energy event measured in the Cosmic Watch, by itself not necessarily anomalous, as explained in Sections 3.3 and 5.2. While there were potentially corroborative same-camera videos, no second camera made an observation which could have settled the crucial question of: internal to the UFODAP or external? The FLIR cameras, some pointed in the same direction, were not active at the time due to the power needs of film equipment.
This is a timeline for Friday 07/16/21, in PDT:
- • 3:50:14am. A ''blank'' video .. without an obvious trigger condition
- • 3:57:16. A diffuse dark spot appears at upper right. Its appearance may have triggered the UFODAP. It has no well-defined edge (Appendix C).
- • 3:57:27. The spot remains; the camera slews, chasing an insect separate from it. During rotation, white dots that turn into black streaks appear, emanating from this spot. Note that the spot is not visible in the later frames where the background sky is well-illuminated. (See Appendix C.)
- • 3:59:24. The camera is again stationary and the dots are visible within the spot for the entire video's length, though the spot vanishes (lightens to match the surrounding gray cloud color) and a new white dot appears in frame 13 where the spot was located, along with a new black dot, in a different region. Frames from every video are in Appendix C (at full res and zoomable) but those from this one most important video in Fig. 5. The transient nature of our dots is not inconsistent with [2,30], and they may be part of a significant larger background of objects [60].
- • 04:00:13am. The first ''normal'' video after the incident. This video and all of those above were quite short (a few seconds each at the most).
We evaluate ten prosaic (''null'') hypotheses put forth both inside/outside our group. Our list is an attempt at completeness, for ruling out or in, even though that is never fully practical. (However, in this case and in others, UAP cannot just ''be anything'', a common phrase used in debunking.)
- 1. Fall-streak hole from aircraft, with the white dots the aircraft, or noise (or: natural cloud formation, Fig. 6, least improbable by elimination)
- 2. A star field or seagull flock producing white dots, as viewed through a hole in the clouds, the dark spot, either a natural or fall-streak hole
- 3. Water drop evaporating, evident as a spot slowly decreasing in area
- 4. Fly on the protective dome leaving, evident as a spot suddenly gone
- 5. Cosmic-ray shower, where ionization lights up CMOS pixel clusters
- 6. Meteor breaking up or meteor shower: fragments of a single meteor or multiple meteors showing up as dots, and making a hole in the clouds
- 7. Camera noise in the dark environment, possibly combined with a residual effect (algorithmic artifact) from the camera rotation earlier — this explains white dots and streaks, but not the dark spot, or its fade-out.
- 8. Resetting of camera levels for a lightening sky, which should manifest as a change in pixel intensities across an entire image (dynamic scaling)
- 9. Military testing tied to a nearby base and/or training area of operation, where the white dots are e.g. a drone cluster, creating a hole (1)
- 10. The reflection of lights in the camera dome from the nearby cities leading to white dots, inside of a water drop for instance (Hypothesis 3).
Note that having two or more cameras (e.g., the fisheye or one active FLIR) could have eliminated hypotheses 3, 4, 7, 8, and 10, leaving only five (external) explanations and greatly facilitating assessment of observations.
I would note that having two cameras could also have eliminated hypotheses 1, 2, 5, 6 and 9, and made the "anomaly" a non-event. The note in the paper reveals bias.
Ultimately, the footage is only special because the two cosmic radiation sensors triggered at roughly the same time.
